"Playing with Uranium" Released: 20 October 2000 (Italy only)
"Last Day on Earth" Released: 7 March 2001 (Japan only)
Pop Trash is the tenth studio album by English rock band Duran Duran. It was released on 19 June 2000 by Hollywood Records. Pop Trash was the band's first release after parting ways with EMI, with whom they had been signed since 1981. It was also the last to feature the trio of Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes and Warren Cuccurullo. The CD album went out of print in 2001.[1]
Release
It was the only album the band released under Hollywood Records. After the album's poor sales, Duran Duran's contract with the label was terminated, and they would not release an album until 2004's Astronaut.[2] The album artwork, created by Andrew Day, features a rhinestone-encrusted car that belonged to Liberace.[citation needed]
From July 2008, the album was made available for sale digitally through the iTunes Store in the United States and Europe, along with Medazzaland.[3] In 2021, the band signed a deal for the album with BMG (along with Medazzaland, Astronaut and Red Carpet Massacre) which saw it being re-issued in the UK on various digital platforms.[4] A CD reissue was released on 17 August 2022.[5]
Critics were generally unexcited by the album, as Metacritic gave it a 52 out of 100.[12] Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone[13] said:
The well-named Pop Trash shows off their jaded hooks and nasty wit; it's for fans only, but those of us who still crumple at the opening hiccups of "Hungry Like the Wolf" will be glad for another fix.
Some of the smooth, spacy ballads that were characteristic of their 1993 self-titled release show up here, but more often than not Le Bon is lost in a swamp of overproduction. Completely absent from this music was the aggressiveness and sexuality that made early Duran Duran great – kinder, gentler records could probably be expected from the band as they age, but this album feels careless and flabby instead of introspective.
Let's give them the benefit of the doubt and say they didn't model Pop Trash after U2's Pop, but darn if Duran Duran aren't after a very similar juxtaposition of groove-based kitsch and super-sincerity. Not surprisingly, there are ephemeral confectionary delights [...] and a general witlessness, never more than when Simon LeBon keeps crooning "We'll all be famous for 15 minutes" as if he just thought of the idea.
A reviewer for Salon called Pop Trash "a mediocre Britpop album",[6] while Q defended the album and said that "Pop Trash proves to be far from embarrassing".[6] Another negative review came from MTV.com who said that "most of the album is, in fact, pop trash".[11]
Ultimately, the album would become the band's lowest-selling album, and their last until 2004's Astronaut.
Singles
The lead single "Someone Else Not Me" peaked only at #53 in the UK, and did not chart at all in United States. However, it made the top 10 in Latvia. Le Bon also recorded versions of this song in Spanish ("Alguien Que No Soy Yo") and French ("Un Autre Que Moi"). The music video for the single was the first to be created entirely in Macromedia Flash digital animation.
The song "Playing with Uranium" was supposed to be released as a single in Italy only, but was available only as a radio promo.[16]
The song "Last Day on Earth" was released in Japan;[17] it was also played during the opening of the Universal Studios Japan theme park in Osaka.
